Bad as it is for gays in the state, transgender Pennsylvanians have it much worse.

Twenty years ago, Dan Miller was fired from an accounting firm, a job where his boss agreed he was doing good work, just because he was gay. It was legal at the time under Pennsylvania state law.

Today, Miller, now Harrisburg City Controller, says, “nothing has changed, not in Pennsylvania.” State law still allows that kind of arbitrary firing.

Miller’s case made national news at the time because the firing was so blatant. His boss didn’t concoct a cover story about poor job performance. He didn’t offer any other pretext – he didn’t have to. He simply fired Miller just because he was gay.

When some clients followed Miller out the door to his new practice, the man who fired him wrote them letters suggesting they get Miller tested for AIDS. Even worse, the man sued Miller for breaching a no-competition agreement. Instead of having a legal claim for being unjustly fired, Miller ultimately got socked with a court judgment for $126,648.

It sounds like a case from a distant time, but it could happen today in most parts of Pennsylvania. Without a state law in place, less than 40 percent of Pennsylvanians are protected by local non-discrimination ordinances, like the one in Harrisburg.

Corey Nickliss was not one of those covered. As part of Pennlive’s “Cost of Coming Out” series, the Penbrook resident wrote that at his relatively new tech job, he could not safely be honest and open about his sexual orientation. Bravely going public anyway, and signing his name to what he wrote, Corey reported that he was fired shortly thereafter.

Now, maybe the company had other, valid reasons for Nickliss’s departure. But we’ll never know for sure. In Mechanicsburg, home of the tech company, no anti-discrimination protections apply, so Nickliss will not have a chance to make his case in court. If he was in fact fired just for being gay, it was perfectly legal.

Bad as it is for gays in the state, transgender Pennsylvanians have it much worse. About 20 times worse, says Liz Bradbury of Pennsylvania Diversity Network.

Bradbury noted that when Dr. Gary Greenberg, a respected podiatrist, became Gwen Greenberg, she was removed from her teaching post at St. Luke’s Hospital in Allentown, despite long years of success in that job. After complaining to Allentown’s Human Rights Commission, Greenberg was able to negotiate a settlement.

An even worse fate befell Allentown-area product engineer Jim Stacy after he became Janis Stacy. She was forced out of her job – part of a company-wide layoff, supposedly – after getting gender reassignment treatment.

Stacy sued in federal court but lost her case last year. The proceedings included a hairsplitting argument that should have been completely unnecessary: whether Stacy had worked enough time at the company’s facility inside Allentown city limits to be covered by the local non-discrimination ordinance.

The injustices inflicted in cases like these are helping more and more people recognize that civil rights for gay and transgender citizens are human rights. There’s no need to discriminate against people simply for being different. As long as they’re not hurting somebody else, just let people be who they are.

But many Pennsylvanians don’t realize that in most of the state, it is still legal to discriminate against gay and transgender people in private jobs, business, housing and public accommodations.

A long-running effort to change that is making steady progress. This year’s version of HB 300, an anti-discrimination bill, has 90 cosponsors in the House, including 11 Republicans. The Senate version has 25 cosponsors.

Each bill is just a handful of sponsors short of getting majority support in each house.

Unfortunately, HB300 goes to the State Government Committee, headed by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, notorious for his hostility to gays.

Passage of the anti-discrimination protections for gays and transgender persons may have to wait for more enlightened committee leadership in the House. But its time will come, in the not too distant future. When it does, Pennsylvania will live up to the promise this country makes to ensure liberty and justice for all.